Emerging media from the borderlands of Jewish identity

How Would Your Bubbe Vote?

Barak Obama wants you to visit your grandmother. No, really L.A. Times columnist and E! talking head Joel Stein reports, the Jewish Council for Education and Research (a pro-Obama action committee) is organizing “The Great Schlep” to Fort Lauderdale over the Columbus Day weekend. Why?

More than hockey moms or gun-toting God lovers, old Floridian Jews are themost important demographic in this election. They make up about 5% of the voters in a swing state with 27 electoral college votes. They never miss so much as a condo board vote and are normally reliable Democrats.

Many are also tremendously suspicious of Obama, what with the dark complexion and the funny-sounding middle name. But while Safta may need help understanding that Obama is not really a Secret Muslim, Bernard Avishai argues Obama may need help understanding and bridging gaps between old-guard Jewish leadership to whom Jerusalem has seemed “not a mythic object of desire but a kind of world-historical Epcot Center, while Israel has seemed something between a bastion against gentile hatred and a great Jewish convention to which they imagine themselves as superdelegates” and young Jews who identify “not with [Joe] Lieberman but with Jon Stewart’s send-ups of Lieberman.”

So, however you’re going to vote in this election, how do you talk to your grandparents and parents about the candidates and the challenges ahead?

Incidentally, and I know I’m late to the party here, while Googling, I came across a great online cooking show Feed Me, Bubbe! Rachel Ray may have an empire based on saccharine, shiksa sorority girl charm, but the bubbe at the center of this online cooking show has chutzpah! Also, this led me to discover a strange breed of one-offs, more nebishes filming their grandmother’s cook. Sweet. But weird.

HALF-REMEMBERED STORIES

In July 2010, we will be rolling out a multi-media exhibition about lost people, lost places, and the quest to reclaim lost memory. In preparation for this exhibit, we've invited 16 young Jews, ages 15 to 25, to blog.